Murder defendant Charles Ray Merritt (left) sits in San Bernardino County Court prior to opening statements in San Bernardino Monday, January 7, 2019. Merritt is on trial for the murder of the McStay family from Fallbrook back in 2010. The bodies of Joseph McStay, 40, and his wife Summer, 43, along with their sons Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, were found in a shallow grave in the desert north of Victorville in 2013. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

A former Fallbrook neighbor of the slain McStay family testified Wednesday, Jan. 9, that she reviewed hours of video from her front-yard surveillance cameras after the McStays disappeared in February 2010, looking for anything that might help investigators.

Jennifer Mitchley, who has since moved out of state, took the stand in the trial of Charles “Chase” Merritt, charged with the 2010 bludgeoning deaths of the McStay family

Merritt, 61, who lived in Rancho Cucamonga at the time of his arrest, has pleaded not guilty in the death-penalty case to the charges that he killed former business associate Joseph McStay, 40, his wife, Summer, 43, and their two children, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, in their Fallbrook home in San Diego County on Feb. 4, 2010, then buried their bodies in two shallow graves in the Mojave Desert, north of Victorville.

The family had moved to Fallbrook, 45 miles north of San Diego, in November 2009 from San Clemente. They were in the process of remodeling their four-bedroom, three-bathroom home when they went missing.

They had been beaten to death with a three-pound sledgehammer found in one of the graves, authorities said.

Mitchley told San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Melissa Rodriguez that San Diego County investigators asked her to review a hard drive for any video clips of interest from Feb. 3 to Feb. 10, 2010 .

But Mitchley, who lived across the street from the McStays, said a problem with the system kept it from recording any videos from Feb. 5 to Feb. 14.

One of the retrieved videos was shown Monday to jurors during opening statements and again Wednesday in court during Mitchley’s testimony — a grainy, black-and-white image of a vehicle that passed by Mitchley’s cul de sac home at 7:47 p.m. Feb. 4, jurors were told.

Prosecutors say that was Merritt’s truck; defense attorneys say the vehicle’s headlights and taillights don’t align with the dimensions of Merritt’s truck.

Another video shown Wednesday, was from Feb. 3, 2010, between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. It shows a partial image of a white vehicle as it passes by Mitchley’s home. She said it looked like the McStay family’s SUV — a white Isuzu Trooper — but the focus of the camera was chiefly on her yard.

“You can tell that car is pulling into their driveway,” she told Rodriguez. “It looked like the SUV, but you can only see the tires, ” Mitchley said.

One video from the night of Feb 4 had the same view, Mitchley said. “That’s a car pulling out of their driveway,” she told Rodriguez.

“Can you tell which car that is?” the prosecutor asked.

“I can’t,” Mitchley answered.

She told Rodriguez that she declined to give investigators her computer that contained the surveillance video hard drive, saying she knew they could download at her home anything they wanted from it.

She also told Rodriguez she was fearful after the McStay disappearance, and handing over her computer would also mean giving up the surveillance system.

Defense attorney James McGee asked Mitchley, “When you were pulling videos of interest, were you told what kind of vehicle to look for?” McGee asked.

“I wasn’t told anything,” she said. “If I was told something, it was just dates,” she answered.

“So you didn’t know if you were supposed to look for a certain type of vehicle, or person or anything — nobody knew, so they just said, ‘whaddaya have,’ ” McGee asked.

She agreed with McGee that other people and vehicles she saw within the time frame investigators gave her were not in the court exhibit.

Mitchley was followed by a resumption of testimony of Michael McStay, Joseph’s brother, who began to outline for the prosecution the growing concerns raised by Feb. 9 when Joseph McStay and the family had not been heard from in recent days.

A journalist since 1975 for City News Service in Los Angeles, The Associated Press in Los Angeles and New York, and The Press-Enterprise, Richard K. De Atley has been Entertainment Editor and a features writer. He has also reported on trials and breaking news. He is currently a business reporter for The P-E. De Atley is a Cal State Long Beach graduate, a lifelong Southern Californian (except for that time in New York -- which was great!) and has been in Riverside since 1992.